We are delighted to share the longlist, or ‘Man Booker Dozen’, for this year’s Man Booker Prize, announced today, 27 July 2016.
The longlist of 13 books was selected by a panel of five judges: Amanda Foreman (Chair); Jon Day; Abdulrazak Gurnah; David Harsent and Olivia Williams. It was chosen from 155 submissions published in the UK between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, is open to writers of any nationality, writing originally in English and published in the UK. It is recognised as the leading prize for high quality literary fiction written in English.
The Man Booker ‘Dozen’
• Paul Beatty (US) – The Sellout (Oneworld)
• J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) – The Schooldays of Jesus (Harvill Secker)
• A.L. Kennedy (UK) – Serious Sweet (Jonathan Cape)
• Deborah Levy (UK) – Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
• Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) – His Bloody Project (Contraband)
• Ian McGuire (UK) – The North Water (Scribner UK)
• David Means (US) – Hystopia (Faber & Faber)
• Wyl Menmuir (UK) – The Many (Salt)
• Ottessa Moshfegh (US) – Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
• Virginia Reeves (US) – Work Like Any Other (Scribner UK)
• Elizabeth Strout (US) – My Name Is Lucy Barton (Viking)
• David Szalay (Canada-UK) – All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
• Madeleine Thien (Canada) – Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
The judges’ view
Chair of the 2016 judges, Amanda Foreman, comments:
“This is a very exciting year. The range of books is broad and the quality extremely high. Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be. From the historical to the contemporary, the satirical to the polemical, the novels in this list come from both established writers and new voices. The writing is uniformly fresh, energetic and important. It is a longlist to be relished.”
Shortlist and winner
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday 13 September. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
The 2016 winner will be announced on Tuesday 25 October in London’s Guildhall. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC.
The winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize will receive a further £50,000 and can expect international recognition. Last year’s winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, has sold over 315,000 copies to date in the UK and Commonwealth and is available in 20 languages.
On winning, James commented: “I just met Ben Okri and it just reminded me of how much my literary sensibilities were shaped by the Man Booker Prize.”
Get involved
Inspire your reading group with these Man Booker Prize 2016 longlist readers’ guides which are now available to download on the Man Booker Prize website.
Read a short extract from each of the longlisted titles and see which ones you want to read.
Listen to the brilliant Man Booker Prize podcast audio series on Soundcloud with Joe Haddow from Radio 2.
Have you read any of the longlisted books? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter using #FinestFiction and #ManBooker2016, or click on a title above to leave a review.
For more information, visit the Man Booker Prize website.
